Making Your Experiences Shine: The YOakleyPR Resume Guide

It’s common knowledge that recruiters have a love-hate relationship with resumes. The problem is every job seeker needs a resume, and despite all the various resume formats and style one can utilize, there is one ultimate truth: Nothing good comes from a bad resume.

In a year, YOakleyPR receives approximately 300 internship application packages featuring good resumes, bad resumes, and, at times, really bad resumes. We only offer 10 intern positions per cycle, and one question keeps coming up during the candidate interview and exit interview process: “How do I make my resume stand out from the pack?”

To answer this question, the YOakleyPR Virtual Internship Program’s Human Resources Summer 2016 team decided to develop an easy-to-use resume guide that would educate and empower young professionals in order to allow them to present themselves in the best way possible to employers.

Whether it be prospective applicants to our virtual internship program or past interns looking for full-time positions —this guide can be used to highlight experiences, strengths, and professional attributes. The YOakleyPR Resume Guide contains all the advice you need to improve your resume and make it shine.

Within our resume guide, there are 9 tips that have been verified by career counselors and human resources professionals.

Our Content tips are geared toward viewing your resume in the lens of the employer. Bullet points should be specific, both in terms of details and numbers, and should use keywords from the job description of the position to which you are applying. There are examples in the guide that can serve as models from which you can base your bullets.

Our Sections/Length tips are geared towards rounding out your resume in terms of incorporating extra-curricular experience that may not be directly industry-relevant. These are merely suggestions and they are not required if you have relevant professional experience. When thinking of using these tips, see if they even apply to you first. For example, if you don’t have any meaningful volunteer experience, don’t add any.

Our Formatting tips are geared toward aesthetics. Going back to viewing your resume in the lens of the employer, what will make your resume easy to read? This comes down to fonts and consistent formatting of locations, positions, and dates.

Please note that these tips are geared toward college students. As you gain more industry-specific experience, these tips may become less relevant. For example, placing education above work experience while pursuing a degree, but transposing the positions once you have graduated from your Bachelor’s degree program and secured a position.

Additionally, our research and recruitment experience emphasizes the fact that the resume writing and presentation process has no singular answer. How to write your resume is always conditionally based on industry, relevant accomplishments and consistency. These tips are not meant to lock you into a particular format. They are merely providing a foundation on which you can brand your professional self.

We wish all of the job seekers reading this guide, “Good luck!” Please feel free to email HR@yoakleypr.com if you have any questions or if you would like to request a resume critique.

We would like to take a moment to thank all of the human resources professionals who shared their wisdom and experiences in order to develop this free resource. A special thank you is extended to all of the YOakleyPR Virtual Internship Program – Human Resource Team Alumni whose assistance made this project a success, especially Zachary Waldorf, Human Resources Project Management Intern and Project Manager for the Resume Guide; and Allison Whittington, Graphic Design Intern.

If you would like to learn more about YOakleyPR’s award-winning Virtual Internship Program, please visit our “Internships” page for more information.

Zachary Waldorf is a student at The George Washington University in Washington, DC, where he is studying Organizational Sciences and Psychology. He currently serves as Human Resources Project Management Intern at YOakleyPR. Areas of Interest: recruiting, talent acquisition, and human resource management.